Talk:An Infamous Army

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 13:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Timing

I love Georgette Heyer's work and I read that she did exhaustive research. I don't understand how Judith (Taverner) Lady Worth saw the Brighton Pavilion's Chinese decor before her marriage in 1812 when Nash did his work between 1815 and 1823. Patrij (talk) 22:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC) Another more serious timing problem is that Bab Childe is said to be 23, having been married in 1809 at the age of 17. That would make her birth year 1791. And it states that her father is dead, in which case her brother should be Duke of Avon. However, he is referred to as the Marquis of Vidal, the title Dominic Alastair holds in Devil's Cub, and there is a brother George between his age and Bab's. That means Dominic Alastair is still alive. Devil's Cub also states that Dominic meets Mary Challoner, Bab's grandmother, some 20 years after the conquests of the Gunning sisters (which happened about 1754) or about 1774 and that he is about 24. If Bab's father is born no later than 1776, he is only 15 when Bab is born. Oh well, it's a fun story anyway. Patrij (talk) 23:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

well, the Research she did was on the Battle of Waterloo, not Regency art. She read extensively on Waterloo, basically everything that she could get her hands on. Her 1940 novel The Spanish Bride was another side product of this research - she had read both Kincaid and Smith.

OTOH I would not put too much faith in historical consistency with her fictional Regency characters. She wrote The Black Moth when she was 17, and over the next 30 years took up those figures every now and then. Wefa (talk) 00:28, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Shrinking back the Plot Summary

Seeing this article again after a while I cannot help but find the plot summary overly bloated and nearly unreadable. Checking the history I found the summary to be the arduous work of a single anonymous IP. This article once had a short and quite concise summary. I propose reverting back to that. What do you think? Wefa (talk) 03:48, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Eight years on, I agree with you entirely. Valetude (talk) 13:35, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Title?

What's behind the title An Infamous Army, or is that non-encyc? Valetude (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

It's a mistake on Heyer's part. On 8 May 1815, when he had just arrived in the Netherlands from the Vienna Conference to take command, Wellington wrote that 'They have given me an infamous army.' He was mainly complaining about the Dutch-Belgian and German contingents and the lack of reliable veteran British units (https://www.jstor.org/stable/44222534?seq=1), and what he wanted to build up his force was some of his old Peninsular regiments. London, appreciating the now-or-never urgency, sent him the troops he asked for and more. He got the Guards, crack infantry of the line like Colborne's 52nd, the Household Cavalry, the best Light Dragoons and Hussars and so on, and he was pretty happy with the Anglo-Allied army he led at Waterloo. His all-too-quotable remark in early May, six weeks before the battle, has often been taken out of context. (Like his 'scum of the earth' remark, which referred to the fact that, in a volunteer army, you would always find men who signed up to get out of some sort of trouble -- either with the law or with a girl they'd got pregnant -- and no-goods who signed up for the gin ration. Considering which, he said, it was remarkable 'what fine fellows we make of them.') Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:22, 28 October 2020 (UTC)